


love you to the moon and to saturn

by metsuryuogi



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, House of Dreams, Married Life, brief mention of typhoid!gilbert because i am a simple and predictable woman, is this angst or fluff i don't know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25899211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metsuryuogi/pseuds/metsuryuogi
Summary: Anne and Gilbert contemplate life and death, endings and beginnings in the House of Dreams' garden.
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe & Anne Shirley, Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 21
Kudos: 95





	love you to the moon and to saturn

**Author's Note:**

> hello, here's something short for you all, I can't even tell you anything about this because I do not know,, where this came from. 
> 
> this was not edited but we die like women!
> 
> title from seven by Taylor Swift

There are many versions of Anne that she can offer him on a day to day basis, Gilbert thinks as he shuffles back to their little house of dreams from his daily rounds. In one hand, he grips his already-tearing black doctor's bag and in the other, a basket of thank-you-for-treating-my-husband scones from the little old lady up the way. 

She could run down the path before he even reaches the porch, shouting with her arms outstretched and a spot of paint on her nose, _'welcome home, Gilbert,'_ with giggles spilling out of every syllable. 

She could meet him at the door, a wooden spoon in hand spilling whatever concoction she had come up with that time, a cheeky and scarily mischievous smile plastered her face, _'Gil, you will not believe the scrape I got myself into today.'_

He'd even settle with the dejected and moody Anne that he would find peering out the window, or face-first into the couch, and barely hear her mumble, _'there has never been a day more horrid in the history of all humankind than today.'_

She was ever so mercurial, this Anne of his, but now, as the sun is already finished with its descent down the western horizon and the air is thick with salt from the ocean being carried by the wind, all he wants is her. Whichever version she can give him, he's not one to complain, but just this once, he wants to give in to a bad day. He wants to sulk into the house with his head hanging pathetically low and let Anne fuss all over him, to let her guide him to the kitchen, the sitting room, perhaps even the bedroom so she can soothe him with her magical words and healing touch. He wants to _give in to the feeling,_ as she would say so philosophically, and surprisingly, he's perfectly content with giving in to the feeling as long as she was there to pull him back up or fall down with him. 

He's late. Far later than he had intended to come home that night, but his rounds had been more taxing than usual, with a persistent seasonal cold going around that was taking its toll on some of his older patients. But when his thoughts weren't clouded by sounds of ragged coughing and sniffling, he thought of Anne, and how she would try her best to wait for him at home no matter how late he was. 

Gilbert thought marriage would satiate a tiny bit of the overwhelming need to be near her all the time, but instead, it grows almost uncontrollably, as if at any moment he'll wake up in a cold sweat, holed up in his childhood bedroom, eighteen again, in love with a girl so frustrating, infuriating, who drives him completely and utterly insane, yet beautiful, quick-witted, who leaves him completely and utterly fascinated and he's terrified at the prospect. 

He finds her in their garden as he trudges up the path, catching the dim and flickering light of a lantern against the shallow brook that borders the house in the corner of his eye. The light only allows him to see her back, but he can identify the slope of those shoulders anywhere. He has trailed behind her for so many years, letting her take the lead, he knows the little hairs at the nape of her neck better than he knows his own, the contours of her silhouette more than his own shadow. 

The gate squeaks slightly when he enters, but she's so immersed in whatever she's looking at– sitting in the moss, no doubt staining the ivory nightdress she's wearing– that she doesn't look up at him and remains in her place with her toes brushing the edge of the water, and her arms wrapped around her knees. 

_"I met a lady in the meads, full beautiful—a faery’s child, he_ _r hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild,"_ he quotes as he sits next to her, her warmth a strong contrast to the cool moss under him, and feeling entirely satisfied with the way a smile tugs at her lips and she slowly peers up at him through her lashes. 

"Are you here to make me swoon with a poetry recitation then?" she teases, tucking her arm under his, "do you take requests?" 

"Anything for you, Anne-girl," he grins, suddenly wanting to stall spilling out his woes to her. 

She puts a finger under her chin in contemplation, humming ever so softly, yet he swears he can feel the vibrations in the arm that is grasped in hers.

"Browning," she says decidedly. 

" _Love me with thy voice, that turns sudden faint above me; love me with thy blush that burns when I murmur_ love me _!"_

It is meant to come out unwavering and steady, reflecting the passion that she so clearly feels when her eyes repeatedly take in the worn-out ink of this particular poem in that well-loved book of Browning's works, but instead, it's barely above a whisper, hoarse and shaky in her presence. 

Anne lifts her head and turns towards him swiftly, her eyes scan him over once, then twice, as if checking for bruises and broken bones. 

"Is something the matter?" 

"No," he shakes his head unconvincingly, "why are you out here so late, by the way?" 

"Oh, no, Gilbert Blythe," she scolds, eyebrows creased and cheeks slightly puffed out, "don't you dare deflect my question—I can smell it from kilometers away." 

He scrunches his nose dramatically, "what does it smell like? Should I bathe?" lifting his collar up to his nose for the full effect. 

Anne groans and nudges him with her shoulder, "you're incorrigible." 

"That may be true, but what does that say of you, to be married to such an incorrigible man?" 

"It says I am equally lost, forever unable to be reformed in the ways of proper society," she says, a lingering sigh following. 

"Society is terribly boring when you think about it," Gilbert suggests, brows quirked thoughtfully. 

Anne throws him an exasperated look, but it barely covers the smile creeping on her face. She bites her lip gently, looking back down at whatever was demanding her attention in the brook, and his eyes follow hers with no luck at seeing what was captivating her so. 

It only lasts a second, before her inquisitive eyes are back on his, "I will not be deterred by your fooling around— why do you look so dispirited tonight?" she says, with a light brush of her finger on his cheekbone to coax it out of him. 

Gilbert knows it is best not to argue with Anne, so he musters up the courage to say something, anything, and he isn't even sure what words demand to be let out before they're already hanging in the air. 

"Watching people die has yet to become easy with time; I have seen people die peacefully, and I have seen people die fighting. As a doctor—even just as a person— I'm unsure which I prefer." 

Anne nods pensively, tucking her knees closer to her chin and tightening her grip around his arm. 

"Don't people want to fight?" he starts again, hesitant, and questioning his own beliefs. Of course, he would never wish pain on his patients, but he remembers in the depth of his typhoid fever, he fought endlessly against what seemed like fate, if only just to see her smiling face once more. He thinks of the sweet old lady again from his rounds, and how her husband will leave her widowed any day now, and he swears that he could never leave Anne without a proper fight. 

"I believe every day that we live is part of the struggle against death. Every day that one survives, one is fighting death, even if they do not appear to be." 

She says it like it's the most mundane truth, a fact of life that he should have learned in his years at medical school alongside clinicals and poking at cadavers. Gilbert was never one to shy away from the fact that Anne was smarter than him, but sometimes her natural intellect that trumps his more rigid book-smarts puts him in a trance. Still, she doesn't say another word, just settles her legs flat across the earth and pulls his head down to her chest so that he can hear her heart beat to the rhythm of _I'm here, I'm here with you._

They stay like that for what could have been seconds, or maybe even hours until she shivers and a strange, choked laugh escapes her lips. 

Gilbert lifts his head enough to stare at her questioningly and her laugh becomes full-bodied, shaking her as she throws her head back and snorts a little. 

"Tadpoles," she breathes out in between laughs. 

"Tadpoles..." he repeats slowly, making sure he understood her correctly. 

She pulls her foot out of the water and wiggles her toes for emphasis, "I just felt one," she explains, "I spotted some tadpoles earlier, and I was just thinking of how _astounding_ it is that one singular frog is the mother to dozens upon dozens of tiny, defenseless tadpoles and that she has to protect them from the entire world; she must be an incredible mother." 

"Mothers are a most fearsome creature," he agrees, finally seeing the little black shapes dancing in the water beneath them. 

Anne is silent then, turning to her head up to face the waxing moon and he wonders if she's thinking about her own mother that she's never known beyond the pages of a book, or maybe Marilla, who raised Anne skillfully despite swearing up and down she had no idea how to bring up a child. 

"Gilbert," Anne whispers, her eyes still fixed away from his, "do you remember last week how you said you were in want of nothing more?" 

He nods, remembering sitting with her at the hearth as she wrote a fantastical short story of princesses and knights and he read the latest medical journal, and he told her he had never felt as content in his life as he did at that moment. 

"I was hoping you might be in want of something... something small—well, not small forever, of course, they grow—something that might even have my horrid red hair and my equally horrid temper, but I pray has some of your virtues as well." 

She finally turns to face him, lips curving into a wide grin and unfallen tears settling on her bottom eyelashes like morning dew on the grass. 

It's subtle, yet so obvious in that way only Anne can achieve during her rambles that it nearly knocks the wind out of him. 

"Really?" he allows himself to finally utter after a minute of gaping at her.

"Oh, I believe so, but I didn't want to tell you until I felt sure enough," she says, leaning over him so that he can wrap his arms around her waist and she can brace her hands on his shoulders. 

He doesn't care that the cuffs of his pants are currently being soaked in the water, he only cares about the woman in front of him, who gives him everything, every day, just by living and being. 

"I love you," Gilbert has nothing else to say, for now, he simply loves her. Tomorrow they will hash out the details like he knows she'll want to do, but for now, he'll give in to the feeling of completeness that she has gifted him. 

He cups her face tenderly with his hands and is in awe just like the first time, reveling in the feeling of the universe in his palms; her freckles, mapping out the same constellations she had taught him in the heavens above; her eyes, blue and sparkling like the giant planets in orbit, and her lips, quick like the comets when they talk, when they argue, and when they kiss. Part of him aches to move quickly, to pick her up and carry her over the threshold and up the stairs just as he did when they were first married, but a bigger part of him wants to savor this moment—savor her— in the cooling fall night to the sounds of the brook babbling, frogs croaking, and his heart pounding in his ears. 

So, he collapses into the merciless pull of gravity, kissing her softly, slowly, swallowing the _'I love you'_ s that she returns repeatedly, imprinting the words into his brain. 

Perhaps this Anne, here and now, is his favorite version of her. 

**Author's Note:**

> the poems Gilbert recites are La Belle Dame sans Merci: a Ballad by John Keats and A Man's Requirements by Elizabeth Barrett Browning respectively. I am a sucker for these two and romantic poetry so this is entirely self indulgent. 
> 
> This sort of has a mood I've never tried to explore before, I can't really explain it, but I hope you enjoy it all the same. 
> 
> As always, please let me know what you think, and much, much love to all of you. 
> 
> twitter: @gilbertjpeg  
> tumblr: @natsujpg


End file.
